Do you think that satellites get lonely?
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010
So I Had A Birthday.
So I had a birthday.
Yeah, it happened.
I had tried to avoid it, but it try as I might, I wasn’t able to stop it from coming. I went through that thing that you go through where I just wanted to ignore it (because I’m getting old old and older), but eventually I did what we all must do, I accepted it (more or less).
And used it as a simple excuse to have a small party. A small party is almost always good for the soul. Things that you missed:
My nearly falling over while trying to walk in heels
Discussions of a writer’s duty to embrace his/her bad decisions as a kind of art-enhancing ‘performance literature’
Threats of forced live West Wing reenactments!
My extremely liberal use of martini shakers
Scarf wearing!
Sweet tea vodka Arnold Palmers
Elaborate diagrams of interpersonal relationships
Explorations of pigeon languages
Velvet jackets (that’s right, plural)
It turned out to be both fun and gratifying. I have always enjoyed (and often missed) having a group of people who could drink and talk the night away (I’m seldom as happy as when my life becomes a little Left-Bank-of-Paris-in-the-‘20s situation).
Then when I woke up on my actual birthday, my roommate Eggplant (still test driving blog names for her) had filled up the apartment with red and yellow and blue and green balloons that she had blown up herself in the dead of night (we have left the balloons out to roll around on the floor and scare the cats and I have to admit that it makes the mornings a little more fun when you have to kick your way through a field of colored balloons on your way to the door).
Later we ran around down in the LA and went to MOCA, (which I had never been to!) and I got to stand really close to some Rothkos . . .
. . . and lean in close enough to them to make the security guard nervous . . .
I also encountered a couple of painters I had never heard of but quite like now:
Mister James Rosenquist, who painted this on oil and canvas, entitled Vestigal Appendage
And Mister Antonio Tapies who painted this stellar-ly entitled word, Grey and Black Cross, NO. XXVII
And of course there was Mister Warhol:
The little quote on the plastic white plaque beside this painting said, “Everybody has their own America, and they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see. When I was little, I never left Pennsylvania, and I used to have fantasies about things that I thought were happening . . . that I felt I was missing out on. But you can only live life in one place at a time . . . you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.”
Sing it brother.
After the museum we wandered down the hill into downtown and very nearly stumbled onto Angel's Knoll, a little stitch of a park (right next to and below Angel's Flight) on a hill overlooking part of Downtown. You, of course remember Angel's Knoll from that penultimate indie/hipster/film school (anti)romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer.
There are, BTW, significantly more bums in the park than in the movie, but it is a cool little place.
Later we meandered down through the (blingy!) Diamond District and then stumbled across to Clifton's Cafeteria (which I totally recognized from The Food Network). It is like an eighty year old cafeteria, an actual cafeteria, with plastic trays and everything! The interior is dark and cavernous and sort of like a forest. It looks like a cross between Disneyland’s Splash Mountain and Disneyland’s Splash Mountain eighty years after they stopped dusting and changing the light bulbs. If you find yourself there, get the macaroni and cheese, it’s so buttery and cheesy and greasy that it is almost soup. I’m still a little sick, it was the most disgusting/awesomest thing that I have eaten in ages.
Then later I got to see my parents as they passed through town and even later I got to log onto Facebook and look at all of the happy birthday wishes that people had left.
I try not to write too many things on this blog that are just about me and the humdrum mundane-ity of my life (this thing is supposed to be about the writing, after all), but it was my birthday, so I’m allowed to write things like this.
I wish that I had some newly discovered gem of wisdom to offer to you about getting old, but I really don’t. All I can tell you is that friends are good and that my roommate is awesome and sometimes it is fun to make museum security guards nervous. And otherwise, try to appreciate the good times when they come.
Okay, I’m done being all saccharin.
Thanks Jose for this awesome birthday video!
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.
.
Yeah, it happened.
I had tried to avoid it, but it try as I might, I wasn’t able to stop it from coming. I went through that thing that you go through where I just wanted to ignore it (because I’m getting old old and older), but eventually I did what we all must do, I accepted it (more or less).
And used it as a simple excuse to have a small party. A small party is almost always good for the soul. Things that you missed:
My nearly falling over while trying to walk in heels
Discussions of a writer’s duty to embrace his/her bad decisions as a kind of art-enhancing ‘performance literature’
Threats of forced live West Wing reenactments!
My extremely liberal use of martini shakers
Scarf wearing!
Sweet tea vodka Arnold Palmers
Elaborate diagrams of interpersonal relationships
Explorations of pigeon languages
Velvet jackets (that’s right, plural)
It turned out to be both fun and gratifying. I have always enjoyed (and often missed) having a group of people who could drink and talk the night away (I’m seldom as happy as when my life becomes a little Left-Bank-of-Paris-in-the-‘20s situation).
Then when I woke up on my actual birthday, my roommate Eggplant (still test driving blog names for her) had filled up the apartment with red and yellow and blue and green balloons that she had blown up herself in the dead of night (we have left the balloons out to roll around on the floor and scare the cats and I have to admit that it makes the mornings a little more fun when you have to kick your way through a field of colored balloons on your way to the door).
Later we ran around down in the LA and went to MOCA, (which I had never been to!) and I got to stand really close to some Rothkos . . .
. . . and lean in close enough to them to make the security guard nervous . . .
I also encountered a couple of painters I had never heard of but quite like now:
Mister James Rosenquist, who painted this on oil and canvas, entitled Vestigal Appendage
And Mister Antonio Tapies who painted this stellar-ly entitled word, Grey and Black Cross, NO. XXVII
And of course there was Mister Warhol:
The little quote on the plastic white plaque beside this painting said, “Everybody has their own America, and they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see. When I was little, I never left Pennsylvania, and I used to have fantasies about things that I thought were happening . . . that I felt I was missing out on. But you can only live life in one place at a time . . . you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.”
Sing it brother.
After the museum we wandered down the hill into downtown and very nearly stumbled onto Angel's Knoll, a little stitch of a park (right next to and below Angel's Flight) on a hill overlooking part of Downtown. You, of course remember Angel's Knoll from that penultimate indie/hipster/film school (anti)romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer.
There are, BTW, significantly more bums in the park than in the movie, but it is a cool little place.
Later we meandered down through the (blingy!) Diamond District and then stumbled across to Clifton's Cafeteria (which I totally recognized from The Food Network). It is like an eighty year old cafeteria, an actual cafeteria, with plastic trays and everything! The interior is dark and cavernous and sort of like a forest. It looks like a cross between Disneyland’s Splash Mountain and Disneyland’s Splash Mountain eighty years after they stopped dusting and changing the light bulbs. If you find yourself there, get the macaroni and cheese, it’s so buttery and cheesy and greasy that it is almost soup. I’m still a little sick, it was the most disgusting/awesomest thing that I have eaten in ages.
Then later I got to see my parents as they passed through town and even later I got to log onto Facebook and look at all of the happy birthday wishes that people had left.
I try not to write too many things on this blog that are just about me and the humdrum mundane-ity of my life (this thing is supposed to be about the writing, after all), but it was my birthday, so I’m allowed to write things like this.
I wish that I had some newly discovered gem of wisdom to offer to you about getting old, but I really don’t. All I can tell you is that friends are good and that my roommate is awesome and sometimes it is fun to make museum security guards nervous. And otherwise, try to appreciate the good times when they come.
Okay, I’m done being all saccharin.
Thanks Jose for this awesome birthday video!
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Friday, October 8, 2010
Wound and Wound Are Spelled the Same.
I sat down like an hour ago to try to write, but nothing’s happening. There’s just no juice. No blood going to it.
I’ve just been writing little descriptions of people. I’ve been jamming words together against their wills.
I’m really very tightly wound today. I need to mellow. I need my spring to unfurl rather than snap.
But whatever, sometimes it’s like ballet and other times it’s like road construction.
I will keep at it.
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.
.
I’ve just been writing little descriptions of people. I’ve been jamming words together against their wills.
I’m really very tightly wound today. I need to mellow. I need my spring to unfurl rather than snap.
But whatever, sometimes it’s like ballet and other times it’s like road construction.
I will keep at it.
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Thursday, October 7, 2010
Problems = Stories = Math.
Lately my roommate Bedazzler Champion (still test-driving blog names for her) and I have been having these tag-team problem sharing sessions where she talks about her problems (and I pretend to listen) and give sage advice and then I talk about my problems and she pretends to listen and give sage advice.
Now I don’t really open up very much or very well, so when I say “talk about my problems” what I actually mean is that I briefly describe them in the way that one might briefly describe the top part of the iceberg that juts out above of the water: “so cold and ice-spiky!”
The thing that we keep saying to each other is that ‘other people’s problems are always more interesting’. It is true. I love other people’s problems. All of that crap going on in your life right now, I find it fascinating! Maybe it’s the ‘misery loves company’ thing, or maybe it’s what my Pop Culture professor (and all Germans) called schadenfreude.
That’s pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Honestly though, I think it is more just that I like listening to the telling. Any discussion of a problem begins with a story, because a problem is just a story that hasn’t ended yet. In order to explain to someone why you had such a shitty day, you have to start with the story. For instance:
YOU: “Why do you have all of those severed fingers in your glove box?”
ME: “Well, that’s a funny story . . .”
Not to get all English Department about it, but if you can find a way to understand The Story - in anything - then you already have a leg up on everybody else. Everything is s story. I have actually told people that the only reason I am able to do my job (it’s a ridiculously complicated Accounting Department position calculating “residuals” in the Merchant Services industry) is because I am able to follow the story of the money I am moving around. Am I being too obtuse? Here, this will make more sense: I have a charming and delightful little friend who (doesn’t read this blog, so I can unironically use words like “charming” and “delightful”) recently started doing Accounts Payable for the company where she works. I have done AP, so I understand it and I was asking her how she was taking to it (some people burn out on accounting-type work really fast) and she was saying that she actually found it relatively enjoyable. This was met with sputters of rebuke from the other people around (or as I like to call them, “the non-account-ies”). My charming and delightful friend explained that the math really isn’t very difficult at all, but that it takes a while to learn The Logic.
For this blog post, ‘The Logic’ will be used interchangeably with ‘The Story’, or at least interdependently, I haven’t decided yet because I’m making all this up as I go along.
So we live our lives as slaves to the tyranny of the forward passage of time, right? This is why we read from left to right and top to bottom. We have all agreed (in the Western world at least [get with it Buddhists and Hindus!]) that this is what time is like, and so that’s how we live.
So understanding The Logic is being able to look at a bunch of numbers on the page and discern the ways in which they interrelate; in other words, it’s being able to see The Story. You have to mentally place everything in its order in order to understand it. This is how a really well-programmed Excel spreadsheet can transcend the mundane to become artful (I have actually spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to write a story that functions like a spreadsheet, made entirely of pieces that are clearly connected, but with all of the complicated relationships made invisible).
I felt a little validated then when my charming and delightful friend invoked The Logic, because I felt like someone else understood (in some miniscule way) the way that I see life. Math is really not that different from storytelling, in fact, math is story telling and stories are fascinating!
You know what else is fascinating? All your problems!
That’s how all this started remember? A problem is just a story too.
But why then are problems (other people’s) more interesting than just a story? Why do I always want to gouge my eyes out when you tell me about your trip to the grocery store, but I’m just rapt when you tell me about how your house burned down after you accidently lit your cat on fire? Is it just that nasty German schadenfreude? Maybe. But maybe it is also because when I hear about your problems, it is just so much more genuine, so much more heartfelt and somehow more meaningful. We spend so much of our time not being meaningful. We make so much small talk. We spend so much of our time asking “Hi, how are you” and responding, “Good”. I am a champion of small talk and I can small talk just about anybody under the table, but I have to flip a switch to make it happen. Most of the time I avoid it like the plague. So maybe this is all about some pretentious quest for truth and a deeper understanding of mankind.
But probably not.
Maybe it is just that other people’s problems are more interesting, And maybe they are more interesting because they are so full of real emotion and none of it affects me at all.
I can’t help but think at this point that some psychiatrist somewhere is reading this and going, “Wow, this guy needs to be on a couch.” Why? Probably because I’ve written a thousand words about problems and accounting and meaning without offering up a single detail about what is bothering me today.
So what is bothering me today?
Hey, look at that iceberg! So cold and ice-spiky!
.
.
.
.
Now I don’t really open up very much or very well, so when I say “talk about my problems” what I actually mean is that I briefly describe them in the way that one might briefly describe the top part of the iceberg that juts out above of the water: “so cold and ice-spiky!”
The thing that we keep saying to each other is that ‘other people’s problems are always more interesting’. It is true. I love other people’s problems. All of that crap going on in your life right now, I find it fascinating! Maybe it’s the ‘misery loves company’ thing, or maybe it’s what my Pop Culture professor (and all Germans) called schadenfreude.
That’s pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Honestly though, I think it is more just that I like listening to the telling. Any discussion of a problem begins with a story, because a problem is just a story that hasn’t ended yet. In order to explain to someone why you had such a shitty day, you have to start with the story. For instance:
YOU: “Why do you have all of those severed fingers in your glove box?”
ME: “Well, that’s a funny story . . .”
Not to get all English Department about it, but if you can find a way to understand The Story - in anything - then you already have a leg up on everybody else. Everything is s story. I have actually told people that the only reason I am able to do my job (it’s a ridiculously complicated Accounting Department position calculating “residuals” in the Merchant Services industry) is because I am able to follow the story of the money I am moving around. Am I being too obtuse? Here, this will make more sense: I have a charming and delightful little friend who (doesn’t read this blog, so I can unironically use words like “charming” and “delightful”) recently started doing Accounts Payable for the company where she works. I have done AP, so I understand it and I was asking her how she was taking to it (some people burn out on accounting-type work really fast) and she was saying that she actually found it relatively enjoyable. This was met with sputters of rebuke from the other people around (or as I like to call them, “the non-account-ies”). My charming and delightful friend explained that the math really isn’t very difficult at all, but that it takes a while to learn The Logic.
For this blog post, ‘The Logic’ will be used interchangeably with ‘The Story’, or at least interdependently, I haven’t decided yet because I’m making all this up as I go along.
So we live our lives as slaves to the tyranny of the forward passage of time, right? This is why we read from left to right and top to bottom. We have all agreed (in the Western world at least [get with it Buddhists and Hindus!]) that this is what time is like, and so that’s how we live.
So understanding The Logic is being able to look at a bunch of numbers on the page and discern the ways in which they interrelate; in other words, it’s being able to see The Story. You have to mentally place everything in its order in order to understand it. This is how a really well-programmed Excel spreadsheet can transcend the mundane to become artful (I have actually spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to write a story that functions like a spreadsheet, made entirely of pieces that are clearly connected, but with all of the complicated relationships made invisible).
I felt a little validated then when my charming and delightful friend invoked The Logic, because I felt like someone else understood (in some miniscule way) the way that I see life. Math is really not that different from storytelling, in fact, math is story telling and stories are fascinating!
You know what else is fascinating? All your problems!
That’s how all this started remember? A problem is just a story too.
But why then are problems (other people’s) more interesting than just a story? Why do I always want to gouge my eyes out when you tell me about your trip to the grocery store, but I’m just rapt when you tell me about how your house burned down after you accidently lit your cat on fire? Is it just that nasty German schadenfreude? Maybe. But maybe it is also because when I hear about your problems, it is just so much more genuine, so much more heartfelt and somehow more meaningful. We spend so much of our time not being meaningful. We make so much small talk. We spend so much of our time asking “Hi, how are you” and responding, “Good”. I am a champion of small talk and I can small talk just about anybody under the table, but I have to flip a switch to make it happen. Most of the time I avoid it like the plague. So maybe this is all about some pretentious quest for truth and a deeper understanding of mankind.
But probably not.
Maybe it is just that other people’s problems are more interesting, And maybe they are more interesting because they are so full of real emotion and none of it affects me at all.
I can’t help but think at this point that some psychiatrist somewhere is reading this and going, “Wow, this guy needs to be on a couch.” Why? Probably because I’ve written a thousand words about problems and accounting and meaning without offering up a single detail about what is bothering me today.
So what is bothering me today?
Hey, look at that iceberg! So cold and ice-spiky!
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.
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It Gets Hard to Come Up With Storylines After Awhile.
So my roommate Galactic Adventurer (still test-driving blog names for her) is watching Grey’s Anatomy right now and apparently there is a storyline about this purported virgin girl who had a – get this – condom stuck in her lung.
As I post this, the episode is still ongoing, so I don’t know what the deal is with this whole condom-inhaling thing, but I thought that it should just be mentioned. Talk amongst yourselves.
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As I post this, the episode is still ongoing, so I don’t know what the deal is with this whole condom-inhaling thing, but I thought that it should just be mentioned. Talk amongst yourselves.
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Dark and Moody and Cool: The Editors.
I have been addicted to this album lately. It’s like auditory crack.
The band is called The Editors and this album is called The Back Room.
It came out several years ago and I had a couple of the songs downloaded, but the other night I was at the Arclight in Hollywood (the Arclight is the go-to stuck-up, fancypants theater in LA because they do movie premieres and such there) which is right across from Amoeba Records. I popped in to buy the new Interpol album and picked up The Editors almost as an afterthought. However I have NOT stopped listening to it since then.
I like to imagine that these guys are very British and always wear dark suits and are somehow always cast in shadow. These are not men who go out during the day. They are like vampires, only not lame. They are old-school awesome. I want to hang out with them in a dark bar with red leather booths and then do something either illegal or immoral or maybe both.
This is what cool sounds like.
(If they were to ever go on tour with Franz Ferdinand, I would buy a Kenneth Cole suit and a VW bus and follow them around the country. You can come, but you have to wear that little black dress you keep in the back of your closet. And that pair of strappy black heels. That’s the deal.)
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Monday, October 4, 2010
A New and Awfuller Than Normal Poem!
No Cars, No Clothes:
A Post-Apocalyptic Love Story Poem.
By
James Bezerra
There are no cars.
There are no clothes.
There are no cars with doors I can close.
We have no cars, but that’s okay, because we have no clothes.
Why would we want to leave here anyway?
When there were cars, you had clothes.
And I had clothes that I would wear to meet you.
and I would greet you,
and never say how much I loved you.
Because what does love matter when we’re dressed so nice?
Surely your love would’ve had too high a price.
But then the cars all went away, so we had to stay. The whole world trapped in place, a perpetual non-motion machine.
And us trapped here.
I’m trapped with you and you’re trapped with me.
But when we threw our clothes away, I said:
We have no cars, but that’s okay, because we have no clothes.
Why would we want to leave here anyway?
If there still were cars, or
if there were still clothes,
we wouldn’t be all wrapped up here;
all wrapped up in your legs, wrapped up in my arms, all wrapped up in our mouths,
in our sweat, in our skin, in our smell, all wrapped up in the surprise of our tenderness.
If there were still clothes and cars and worlds beyond the horizon,
then we never would have learned each other’s bodies. Never would have mapped your freckles, never would have learned the little dry cracks in your lips, never would have seen me reflected in your eyes below me. Never would have learned much at all.
The world ended when the cars went away and the clothes fell away and that’s okay because:
we have no cars,
and that’s okay,
because we have no clothes.
Why would we want to leave here anyway?
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.
:)
.
A Post-Apocalyptic Love Story Poem.
By
James Bezerra
There are no cars.
There are no clothes.
There are no cars with doors I can close.
We have no cars, but that’s okay, because we have no clothes.
Why would we want to leave here anyway?
When there were cars, you had clothes.
And I had clothes that I would wear to meet you.
and I would greet you,
and never say how much I loved you.
Because what does love matter when we’re dressed so nice?
Surely your love would’ve had too high a price.
But then the cars all went away, so we had to stay. The whole world trapped in place, a perpetual non-motion machine.
And us trapped here.
I’m trapped with you and you’re trapped with me.
But when we threw our clothes away, I said:
We have no cars, but that’s okay, because we have no clothes.
Why would we want to leave here anyway?
If there still were cars, or
if there were still clothes,
we wouldn’t be all wrapped up here;
all wrapped up in your legs, wrapped up in my arms, all wrapped up in our mouths,
in our sweat, in our skin, in our smell, all wrapped up in the surprise of our tenderness.
If there were still clothes and cars and worlds beyond the horizon,
then we never would have learned each other’s bodies. Never would have mapped your freckles, never would have learned the little dry cracks in your lips, never would have seen me reflected in your eyes below me. Never would have learned much at all.
The world ended when the cars went away and the clothes fell away and that’s okay because:
we have no cars,
and that’s okay,
because we have no clothes.
Why would we want to leave here anyway?
.
.
:)
.
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